Juvenile Delinquency and Victimization in Cyprus

Criminological and criminal justice research is a relatively new academic discipline in Cyprus. The current paper first examines and critiques official data on juvenile delinquency in Cyprus. As expected, the findings on delinquency and victimization gathered from self-reported surveys suggest higher rates of delinquency than those based on official statistics. This paper is based for a large part on data obtained from the International Self-reported Delinquency Study (ISRD-2), a national survey of 2385 Cypriot 12–16 year old pupils concerning a number of delinquency risk and protective factors. Those results were compared to the data collected as part of the ISRD-2 in five European Union (EU) member states, which – like Cyprus - joined the EU in 2004. This comparison focuses on data in the capitals of the six countries concerned. Research and delinquency prevention implications are discussed.     

Review of “Youth Peacebuilding: Music,Gender, and Change,” by Lesley J. Pruitt

Ten countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean region joined the European Union in 2004. Two more new members from southeast Europe (Bulgaria and Romania) joined in January 2007. Given the diverse range of political, economic, social, and cultural contexts of these nations, EU enlargement and integration processes have entered a new phase of complexity. In this article, I analyze the cultural policy developments in eight of the new EU member states (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia), examine in detail state and nonstate cultural funding patterns, and assess the influence of EU policy—especially with regard to the Culture Program, Structural Funds, and European cultural cooperation initiatives—for its impact on cultural policy development in the new member states. Next, I discuss the new forms of pan-European cultural cooperation, focusing on the development of networks, foundation initiatives, and observatories. Finally, I explore issues in development of cultural policy in the new member states and conclude with recommendations for the future of the enlarged EU.     

Girl Members of Deviant Youth Groups,Offending Behaviour and Victimisation: Results from the ISRD2 in Italy and Switzerland

Although a lot of research has been conducted on the delinquency of boys who are members of gangs, only a few quantitative studies have analysed the involvement of girl gang members in delinquency and its link with victimisation. In this study, the prevalence rates of girls who are members of gangs in Italy and in Switzerland are shown. We compared the Italian data (N = 5.784) and Swiss data (N = 3.459) from the second wave of the International Self-Reported Delinquency Study (ISRD-2); the population used for this comparison was made up of teenagers from the ages of 13 to 16. Members of deviant youth groups accounted for 5.7% of the Italian sample and 4.7% of the Swiss sample; in both countries, about a third of gang members were girls. In general, girls who are members of gangs commit more delinquent acts than both girls and boys who are not members of gangs. Girl gang members are also more often victimised than girls and boys who are not members of a deviant youth group.     

Different Concepts of Ethnicity in a Cross-Atlantic Study of Violence and Drug Use among Deviant Youth

Despite their common multi-ethnic populations, the meaning and application of the term ethnicity varies between the United States, Canada and the Netherlands. This paper attempts the construction of a racial/ethnic measure that enables meaningful cross-national comparisons. As part of the Drugs, Alcohol and Violence International (DAVI) project, the link between different measures of ethnicity and alcohol use, drug use, violence, and delinquency was studied within samples of 14- to 17-year-old juvenile detainees and dropouts in Philadelphia, Toronto and Amsterdam. Results showed a relationship between origin (the most discriminating of ethnicity measures) and alcohol and drug use, but not violence-related behaviour. Differences in substance use and violence were more attributable to differences between countries and samples than between ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ youth.Annemieke Benschop (MSc) is a researcher at the Bonger Institute of Criminology at the University of Amsterdam. Lana D. Harrison (MA, PhD) is Associate Director of the Center for Drug and Alcohol Studies and a Professor at the University of Delaware (Newark, DE). Dirk J. Korf (MA, PhD) is an Associate Professor and Research Director at the Bonger Institute of Criminology at the University of Amsterdam, and an Associate Professor in Criminology at Utrecht University. Patricia Erickson (MA, PhD) is a Senior Scientist with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto (Canada) and a cross-appointed Professor in Sociology and Criminology at the University of Toronto.     

Crime and Delinquency Prevention in Some European Countries

As part of a larger study on crime and delinquency prevention programs in North America, the authors visited four European countries, Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland in order to compare prevention programs and their evaluation.

The authors found that the systematic study of the programmatic effectiveness and efficiency of crime and delinquency prevention is unknown to European practitioners and researchers.

The authors describe in this article six European crime and delinquency prevention programs: family case-work, leisure activities, community organization, crisis intervention centers, information for victims and prevention police activities.     

Delinquent Behavior, Violence, and Gang Involvement in China

Objectives

This study examines the relationship between delinquent behavior and gang involvement in China. We assess the feasibility of self-report methodology in China and whether established findings in US and European settings on the relationship between gang involvement, violence specialization, and delinquent behavior extend to the Chinese context.

Methods

Data were gathered from 2,245 members of a school-based sample in Changzhi, a city of over 3 million people in Northern China. Drawing from a detailed survey questionnaire that measures prominent theoretical constructs, multi-level item response theory modeling was used to examine the association of gang involvement with general and specific forms of delinquency, notably violence specialization.

Results

Over half of the sample engaged in some form of delinquency over the prior year. Eleven percent of the sample reported gang involvement. Large bivariate differences in overall delinquency and violence specialization between gang and non-gang youth were observed. Multivariate analyses with measures of low self-control, household strains, family and school attachment, parental monitoring, and peer delinquency reduced the bivariate effect sizes, but current and former gang members had higher log odds of overall delinquency and violence specialization.

Conclusion

In helping fill gaps of knowledge on gangs and delinquency in the world’s most populous country, this study observed self-reported rates of delinquency and gang involvement not unlike Western countries. Findings on the relationship between gangs and delinquency, particularly violence, are consistent with the current literature and support the invariance hypothesis of gang involvement.     

An Exploratory Study of the Characteristics that Prevent Youth from Completing a Family Violence Diversion Program

Youth perpetrated violence against a family member has gained the attention of social service workers and law enforcement, yet professionals working with these youth have little understanding of the characteristics of the population that would impede intervention success. This article presents an exploratory study of youth (N?=?209; 50 % males and 50 % females, average age 15.7 years) who participated in a court-diversion program for first time offenders of family violence and examined socio-demographic and delinquency characteristics and the role they play in completing the program. Findings indicate that delinquency characteristics, specifically having a prior violent arrest and skipping school, carry significance in preventing youth from successfully completing the Family Violence Intervention Program. These findings lend support to the current literature and address the need for a more tailored approach to treating and retaining youth in a family violence intervention program.     

How important are interview methods and questionnaire designs in research on self-reported juvenile delinquency? An experimental comparison of Internet vs paper-and-pencil questionnaires and different definitions of the reference period

There has been relatively little change over recent decades in the methods used in research on self-reported delinquency. Face-to-face interviews and self-administered interviews in the classroom are still the predominant alternatives envisaged. New methods have been brought into the picture by recent computer technology, the Internet, and an increasing availability of computer equipment and Internet access in schools. In the autumn of 2004, a controlled experiment was conducted with 1,203 students in Lausanne (Switzerland), where “paper-and-pencil” questionnaires were compared with computer-assisted interviews through the Internet. The experiment included a test of two different definitions of the (same) reference period. After the introductory question (“Did you ever...”), students were asked how many times they had done it (or experienced it), if ever, “over the last 12 months” or “since the October 2003 vacation”. Few significant differences were found between the results obtained by the two methods and for the two definitions of the reference period, in the answers concerning victimisation, self-reported delinquency, drug use, failure to respond (missing data). Students were found to be more motivated to respond through the Internet, take less time for filling out the questionnaire, and were apparently more confident of privacy, while the school principals were less reluctant to allow classes to be interviewed through the Internet. The Internet method also involves considerable cost reductions, which is a critical advantage if self-reported delinquency surveys are to become a routinely applied method of evaluation, particularly so in countries with limited resources. On balance, the Internet may be instrumental in making research on self-reported delinquency far more feasible in situations where limited resources so far have prevented its implementation.

Child Maltreatment,Placement Strategies,and Delinquency

The current study examined the criminal justice experiences of foster care youth living with relatives, foster families, and living in congregate care; dependents receiving in-home care; and non-dependent youth. Specific attention was directed at uncovering whether form of maltreatment, placement type, and/or placement instability were related to delinquency. A prospective analysis of official record data followed children in Los Angeles County from the time of a first admission to the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) to potential involvement in the criminal justice system (N = 1,235). The study also utilized a matched control design in which DCFS cases were compared to non-dependent controls (N = 1,235). The most consistent predictors of delinquency were placement instability and age at placement. Youth who were older at placement and youth with at least one placement change were more likely to be arrested for violent and non-violent crimes as well as be charged by the district attorney than younger youth with no placement changes.     

Evidence for the crime drop: survey findings from two Finnish cities between 1992 and 2013

In this article, results from self-report studies in two Finnish cities, Helsinki and Turku, are presented. The aims are to compare the prevalence of youth crime between these cities and changes in delinquency during the observation period. In Helsinki, the surveys took place in 1992, 2006 and 2013, and in Turku, the surveys took place in 1992, 2001, and 2013. With the exception of the Turku 2001 survey, all datasets have been collected under the auspices of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD). The most recent survey, ISRD3, targeted comprehensive school pupils from grades 7–9 (ages 13–16), while some of the former studies excluded 7th and/or 8th grades. The results show that (1) the delinquency rates are generally higher in Helsinki than in Turku and (2) the prevalence of both property- and violence-related crimes has decreased, while drug use manifested fluctuating or increasing trends. Overall, the findings are consistent with the observation that there has been a relatively general crime drop in the Western world since the 1990s.     

《中华人民共和国反垄断法》析评

The Anti-Monopoly Law of the People’s Republic of China has provided to prohibit monopoly agreements and abuse of dominant market position, control concentration of business operators and fight against administrative monopoly. The transformation of China’s economic system is incomplete, and the Anti-Monopoly Law has many flaws. At the initial stage of enforcing the Anti-Monopoly Law, severe challenges will occur in legislative purposes, enforcement authorities, fighting against administrative monopoly and handling of the relationship between anti-monopoly enforcement and industry supervision. Thus, the promulgation of the Anti-Monopoly Law is only the first step in the legislation on anti-monopoly. Wang Xiaoye held a bachelor’s degree of philosophy from Inner Mongolian Normal University (1981), LL.M. from Renmin University of China (1984) and Doctor Juris magna cum laude from the University Hamburg (1993). Since 1984, she works at the Institute of Law, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). From 1988 to 1993, she studied in Germany based on Max-Planck Institute for Comparative Private Law. As visiting scholar she spent a year at Max-Planck Institute for Comparative Intellectual Property and Competition Law, and a year at Max-Planck Institute for Comparative Social Law in Munich. In 2004, she was invited to the US by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. In 2005, she was invited to the European Union Visitors Program, and awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to spend a year at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. Prof. Wang works in the areas of economic law, international economic law, and focuses on competition law. Her publications include: Monopoly and Competition in the Chinese Economy — A conception for merger control in China in view of the American and German practices (J C B Mohr, 1993); Monopoly Problem in the Merger of Enterprises (Law Press, 1996); On Competition Law (China’s Legal Publishing House, 1999); Competition Law of European Community (China’s Legal Publishing House, 2001); Economic Law (Social Sciences Academic Press, 2005); Competition Law (Social Sciences Academic Press, 2007). She also has over 200 papers published in Chinese, German and English languages. Prof. Wang has served as vice president of National Association for Economic Law of China, the head of the Consultant Committee for WTO Trade and Competition Policy of the Ministry of Commerce, and member of the Expert Advisory Board for Anti-Monopoly Legislation of the State Council and the National People’s Congress. In her honor, she once lectured on competition law for the Standing Committee of the Ninth and Tenth People’s Congress. In international academic activities, she is a founding member of Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA) and of the Asian Competition Forum, and member of International Advisory Board of the CUTS C-CIER. She lectured on Chinese law at ABA, IBA, IPBA, ACF, Harvard University, Columbia University, Washington University (St. Louis), New York University, KFTC, Chatham House, LIDC, IDRC and other institutions.     

Mapping an agenda for the study of youth sexual aggression in Europe: assessment,principles of good practice,and the multilevel analysis of risk factors

ABSTRACT

Sexual aggression is a serious threat to young people's sexual health in Europe, but establishing the exact scale of the problem has been hampered by a variety of conceptual and methodological problems. This article presents a framework for studying youth sexual aggression that addresses both prevalence and risk factors of victimisation and perpetration. It proposes a research tool to comprehensively assess the perpetration of, and victimisation by, sexual aggression that captures different coercive strategies, sexual acts, victim–perpetrator relations, and gender constellations. The instrument is rooted in a clear conceptual definition of sexual aggression and was pilot-tested in 10 countries of the European Union (EU). Furthermore, a list of good practice criteria is proposed to promote the quality and comparability of research on youth sexual aggression in Europe. A multilevel approach combining individual-level and country-level predictors of sexual aggression is outlined and illustrated with data from the pilot study in 10 countries.     

Are devaluations contractionary in emerging economies of Eastern Europe?

In most developing countries currency depreciation is said to be contractionary. This is because depreciation reduces the aggregate supply more than it increases the aggregate demand. However, emerging European economies have received no attention so far, mostly due to unavailability of data. Now that enough time-series data are available, we try to fill the gap by investigating the impact of real depreciation in effective exchange rates of Belarus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Slovak Republic on their domestic output. We find that in the short run real depreciation is expansionary in Belarus, Latvia, Poland, and Slovak Republic; contractionary in Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, and Russia; and has no effect in Lithuania. In almost none of the countries, the short-run effects last into the long run.

Minors and informed consent: a comparative approach

The European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine of the Council of Europe provides in article 6 for special protection of persons who are not able to give free and informed consent to an intervention in the health field, e.g. minors. According to the second paragraph of this article it is up to domestic law to decide whether and under which conditions a minor is capable of taking autonomous decisions in the health field. In the present article an overview is given of the legal regulations in place regarding the position of minors in a health care setting in the EU Member States that have ratified the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine namely Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. As the overview will show, the legal position of minor patients in a health care setting varies from country to country. This in view of the system they have opted for as well as the age and circumstances under which minors are allowed to take health care decisions autonomously.     

Convergence in Transition Countries – Focus on Investment: Central and Eastern Europe, 1970–1996

Our data on investment in Central and Eastern European economies reveal that, though investment rates were typically high in the 1970s, the marginal efficiency of investment was low. Investment shares begun to decline in the 1980s, before the collapse of the communist system, but there was some recovery in most countries after transition. We use the Kalman filter framework to test for convergence in investment rates. We find some evidence of convergence in Central European countries – former Czechoslovakia, Poland and the countries of the former Yugoslavia. For the remainder of the socialist bloc, however, we were unable to isolate convergence in investment shares.     

An experimental evaluation of teen courts

Teen Court (TC) is a juvenile diversion program designed to prevent the formal processing of first-time juvenile offenders within the juvenile justice system. TC instead utilizes informal processing and sanctions in order to prevent future offending. Despite its widespread popularity throughout the United States of America, little rigorous research has been conducted on the effectiveness of the TC model for reducing recidivism. Using an experimental design, this study examined the effectiveness of TC in reducing recidivism and improving the attitudes and opinions of juvenile offenders in comparison with a control group of youth who were formally processed. Self-reported delinquency was higher for those youth who participated in TC. TC youth were also found to have significantly lower scores on a scale of belief in conventional rules than had youth who were processed in the Department of Juveniles Services. Implications of these findings are discussed.

DELINQUENCY AND GENDER MODERATION IN THE MOVING TO OPPORTUNITY INTERVENTION: THE ROLE OF EXTENDED NEIGHBORHOODS

A long history of research has indicated that neighborhood poverty increases youth's risk taking and delinquency. This literature predominantly has treated neighborhoods as independent of their surroundings despite rapidly growing ecological evidence on the geographic clustering of crime that suggests otherwise. This study proposes that to understand neighborhood effects, investigating youth's wider surroundings holds theoretical and empirical value. By revisiting longitudinal data on more than 1500 low‐income youth who participated in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized intervention, this article explores the importance of extended neighborhoods (neighborhoods and surroundings) and different concentrated disadvantage configurations in shaping gender differences in risk taking and delinquency. The results from two‐stage, least‐squares analyses suggest that the extended neighborhoods matter and they matter differently by gender. Among girls, extended neighborhoods without concentrated disadvantage were associated with lower risk‐taking prevalence than extended neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage. In contrast, among boys, localized concentration of disadvantage was associated with the highest prevalence of risk taking and delinquency. Interactions between the immediate and surrounding neighborhoods were similarly associated with differential opportunity and social disorganization mediators. Among the more critical potential mediators of the link between localized disadvantage and boys’ risk taking were delinquent network ties, strain, and perceived absence of legitimate opportunities for success.     

Social Class and Delinquent Behavior in a National Youth Panel: 1976–1980

This article addresses the question of whether or not a more adequate measure of self-reported delinquency applied to a representative national sample would reveal class differences in r l e l i m that have not been found in earlier self-report studies. The methodological criticisms of earlier self-report measures are reviewed, a new self-report measure is described, annual sex-by-class-specific prevalence and incidence rates based on this measure are presented for a national youth panel for the years 1976 through 1980, and the implications of the class findings are discussed. Class differences in both prevalence and incidence are found for serious offenses. For males, class differences are also found in the incidence of nonserious offenses and global delinquency Class differences are more pervasive and stronger when using an incidence as opposed to a prevalence measure. Criticisms of earlier self report measures appear Justified, calling into Question conclusions about the distribution of delinquency in the adolescent population which are based on prim self-report data.     

Subterranean Sources of Juvenile Delinquency in China: Evidence from Birth Cohort Surveys

This article examines possible reasons for the dramatic rise in Chinese juvenile delinquency rates that have occurred since the start of economic reform. The article focuses on the degree to which relatively recent modifications in the ideology and practice of Chinese communism have engendered new social pressures and strains on young people. Delinquents’ social values are compared with those of non-delinquent youth, drawing heavily from data collected in a longitudinal birth cohort study. The dataset is assessed for evidence of subterranean values; i.e., subculture-based reflections of principles found within the dominant political culture; based on the theory that youthful deviance and delinquency in China are fueled primarily by the relatively rapid diffusion of often-contradictory market-based precepts. The lingering impact of Maoism is also assessed, particularly with regard to incongruous ideological influences on youth.